Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

The War Goes On

Today is Friday the 13th, on which I ask non-sex workers to speak up for our rights. I’ve given many suggestions for how to do that over the past seven years, but this year I’m going to be a little more specific about the help I’d like you to give, and it’s twofold. First, very simply, is to give sex workers money; we had an extremely rough autumn thanks to the quadrennial national madness, and every sex worker and organization is hurting right now. The second way, if you’re American, is to call your senator or representative (especially your senator) to say how displeased you are about the persecution of adult sex workers and clients. You won’t get to talk to the politician, but their office staffs are usually quite small so a few dozen phone calls in one day on the same subject will make an impression on the staff, and that may get through to the politician in a report. The reason I’m asking you to take this specific step is that the extrajudicial and unconstitutional persecution of Backpage has come to a head; on Monday evening, exhausted by the constant string of nuisance lawsuits, groundless charges, illegal arrests and blatant slander, Backpage followed in the footsteps of Craigslist by censoring its adult services section in the United States:

As the direct result of unconstitutional government censorship, Backpage.com has removed its Adult content section…new government tactics, including pressuring credit card companies to cease doing business with Backpage, have left the company with no other choice but to remove the content in the United States. As federal appeals court Judge Richard Posner has described, the goal is either to “suffocate” Backpage out of existence or use the awesome powers of the government to force Backpage to follow in the footsteps of Craigslist and abandon its Adult advertising section. Judge Posner described such tactics as “a formula for permitting unauthorized, unregulated, foolproof, lawless government coercion”…As The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have observed, the Senate subcommittee has engaged in an “invasive, burdensome inquiry into Backpage.com’s editorial practices [that] creates an intense chilling effect, not only for Backpage but for any website operator”…This will not end the fight for online freedom of speech. Backpage.com will continue to pursue its efforts in court to vindicate its First Amendment rights and those of other online platforms for third party expression.

In the meantime, the many sex workers who use Backpage for advertising are scrambling to figure out what to do. Many will simply move to other sections of Backpage, such as massage and personals, just as they did on Craigslist; others will prefer to migrate to different platforms. With that in mind, here is a LONG list of other escort advertising sites; these are all drawn from lists at Rate That Rescue and Saucy Says What? plus a few sent to me by people on Twitter. Note that I can’t vouch for any of these except Eros, Slixa, TNA, Mature Sensual and ECCIE; the last three are free, and I’d really like to see ECCIE get more traffic in Seattle because it’s a great site that served me well in Oklahoma. I’ve written about P411 & Date-Check before; both have advertising but aren’t primarily advertising sites per se. The rest are just listed and linked, but I know little or nothing about them. I’ve organized them with the biggest sites at the top, then regional or special-interest sites in alphabetical order with notes to indicate if they’re anything other than broad female escort sites. Sites marked with an asterisk are those on which I have a current or recent profile.

7 Responses

I realize they might be free, but I would not encourage anyone to use an ad scraper web site like Erotic Monkey. They give women the run around, and for those who aren’t savvy about DMCA claims, will NOT remove photos used without permission.

Wow, it didn’t take the dames de joie of Backpage long to adapt; most, in a day, have hopped over to the personal sections, “women for men“, and as for Craigslist, they have been in the “casual encounter” section for quite some time. In a couple of days, they will all be over in the personal section…so what will congress do now? I guess they will have to prohibit any and all communications between men and women, men and men, women and women, and in any venue.

BTW I used Backpage often and it had been my experience that you will get a satisfying, honest encounter 4 out of 5 times. I have never seen any children, slaves, extorted and/or blackmailed women there in all my years of using Backpage or Craigslist. Well, there are laws against the aforementioned things and such laws should be enforced. As for “trafficking“, just what does that mean? Anything to goes from point A to point B has been trafficked. Yes, it is an assault on freedom of individuals to make their own choice, only a big win in a court of law (like Lawrence v. Texas) will reverse this madness.

Well, they are all capable small-business owners and have experience with adverse business conditions. I expect that if we fired all politicians and bureaucrats and put these in charge, a lot of the current problems would go away. Of course, you might have to pay for a few things then that were “free” before, but no more hidden costs, so I would say that would be a plus as well.

Thank you, Maggie, for your suggestions as to what to do, on a Friday the 13th, to help sex workers’ (and their clients’, for that matter) lives a bit better. I did follow one of those suggestions, and wrote a letter to my MP (Member of Parliament, Canadian equivalent of a Congressman/woman), with a copy to the Minister of Justice.

Canada, as some of you may know, adopted the “Swedish model” under the previous, Conservative, administration, and the Liberal government that took its place shows no sign, so far, of repealing the law instituting the Swedish model. I doubt that the relevant sections of the Law are enforced much, I haven’t read of any criminal prosecutions under it, but then I don’t see all criminal charges brought in front of Canadian courts. But they could, in theory, be enforced, and no doubt there are people in the police forces and the political class who would love to enforce them.

In my letter I outlined my reasons for opposing these provisions, and took the trouble to point out exactly which paragraphs I object to. It’s just a few lines, in fact, specifying the penalties for anyone who offers monetary or other compensation in exchange for sex.

I signed the letter with my name – I consider this a fairly free country, I doubt that I open myself to any trouble just for advocating a change in the law.

Anyway, I’ll now wait to see if there is any reply. Even if there isn’t, I have made a contribution to the anti-prohibitionists’ cause.

Both my MP and the Minister of Justice are women, and happen to be from Vancouver, where I also live.

I have been trying to register on eccie & it keeps telling that I can’t register 2 accounts, problem is I don’t have an account there. This is my first time signing on. I can’t even contact administrators because it keeps going back to saying the same thing lol. Can you help ?

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